Mazatlán, the World and Photography from a different perspective............

Friday, July 22, 2011

Tomatoes

Where else can you get tomatoes that look as good as these and taste as good. Well Mexico of course and nowhere else in my experience unless you go to some country in Africa where the villagers grow their own or maybe in Italy. Those from Europe mostly come from Holland or Spain where they are grown under glass and don't even have soil where computers do the work and the feeding. They are called hydroponic tomatoes.

They taste of absolutely nothing and to make it worse, people have grown used to the taste of nothing that they know no other taste for a tomato. Kids (inner city working class) would probably really feel stunned if they tasted a real tomato taste firstly because it doesn't taste of Heinz tomato soup or tomato ketchup. The only two things to compare.

Here in Mazatlán we also buy small tomatoes off Teniente Azueta in those holes in the walls and out the back of trucks where all vegetable can be had for small amounts. They don't look as good as the market tomatoes but they are sold out of big wooden boxes for 2 to 3 pesos a kilo! You put them in the oven in large trays accompanied by cloves of unpeeled garlic and bake the hell out of them. They are delicious and can be kept in the fridge for weeks adding fantastic flavour to all dishes that require them.

I eat kilos of tomatoes. I love them and when I go to Europe and the US I pay a lot of money to buy a vine tomato that is actually grown in real sun and in real soil.